Honourable members of the House of Commons, thank you very much for the invitation to speak to you today on behalf of Orford Music.
Located in Quebec's Eastern Townships, Orford Music is a place where people come from all over the world to learn, create and perform music together at the very highest level. In 2021, we will proudly celebrate our 70th anniversary, which is no small achievement for an organization in the arts and culture sector.
Orford Music is a charitable organization, and since 1951 we have offered high-level mentoring and training to emerging musicians between the ages of 18 and 25. Every summer, our international academy of classical music, one of the largest in Canada, welcomes world-class professors and artists to share their passion and knowledge with hundreds of mainly Canadian young musicians.
In parallel with the academy's activities, the Orford Music festival attracts more than 25,000 music lovers every summer. We present over 60 concerts, including several free ones featuring the academy's best musicians, at various sites in our region. Orford Music is a 365-days-a-year operation and hires nearly 70 permanent and temporary employees.
The pandemic has radically transformed our reality. Our flagship festival, group bookings and major annual fundraising events were all immediately cancelled. Our self-generated revenues, which represent over 60% of our income, disappeared overnight, and over 50% of our permanent staff had to be laid off.
In many ways, however, Orford Music has been very fortunate. With significant help from all levels of government, we were able to make a successful switch to online teaching this summer. We have invested in new technology and reorganized our workforce. We are trying to attract new audiences, and we are looking for opportunities to fulfill our mission in other ways.
In the midst of it all, we are very grateful for the support we have received from you and from the people who count on us to keep teaching and playing music, even in the darkest of moments. For Orford Music, however, the real threat of COVID-19 lies in the crippling damage it has done to our medium and long-term planning.
In the months leading up to the pandemic, we had been working toward agreements with federal, provincial and private partners to enable us to revitalize our aging infrastructure. A business plan was submitted to the Quebec government and a fundraising committee was created to approach donors.
The buildings of Orford Music are recognized as crown jewels of Quebec's contemporary architecture movement and have tremendous historical significance. Visitors to Orford Music can even experience the original Man and Music Pavilion from Montreal's legendary Expo 67, which was dismantled, transported and rebuilt on our site.
Our concert stage and classrooms have welcomed generations of great Canadian artists, from Maureen Forrester and John Newark to Gregory Charles, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Stéphane Tétreault, many of whom describe their time at Orford as being among the most creative and impactful experiences of their career.
But many Quebec winters have taken their toll, and today's music students have different needs and must access different kinds of resources to reach their full potential. We have very big dreams, including a virtual library for all artistic activities on site and a high-level technological pavilion for recording classical music. The preservation and adaptation of these buildings is critical to the future of Orford Music, and now COVID-19 has robbed us of the opportunity to address the situation in any meaningful way.
Orford Music may have navigated through the immediate crisis, but even our most optimistic scenarios suggest that it will take years for our self-generated revenues to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Our urgent infrastructure needs have become only more urgent in the last year.
We believe that the best way for the Canadian government to support us as an arts and culture organization is by providing funding for these types of essential infrastructure projects. Without revitalizing our buildings, our mission cannot be maintained in the medium term. We need your help to plan and build for the future so we can continue to play an essential role in the lives of young musicians, great artists, and ordinary Canadians, who need music now more than ever.
Our founder, Gilles Lefebvre, said that “the arts carry a message full of joy and unexpected delight”. It's a vital message, surely, for our times.
Thank you again for this opportunity and for your support.